There are some new stats pages this week, but if you visit the old standings or new team fantasy stats hold down shift and refresh the page…style sheets get cached and that’s how you load in the new ones. The standings page now also shows the wildcards.

Team stats musings: There are 3 different ways to look at your team’s fantasy performance, and I can’t figure out which one is best. You can look at the current active roster, but that won’t include things like guys currently on the DL, players you’ve traded but logged a bunch of time for you, etc. You can look at the entire roster, including the inactive guys, which will include guys on the DL and players demoted for bad performance, but wouldn’t capture guys you’ve traded. Or you can just look the stats in the games, which will include both traded and demoted guys, but is that really what you want to know? “Geez, we had really good pitching (before I traded deGrom)”…anyway, all 3 options are now there, and I’ll let you decide what is most meaningful to you. Actual (not fantasy) stats appear on the power ratings pages.

I think I’ve worked out the glitches on the lineups and rotation checkers, but let me know if you see anything weird.

Finally, remember that the 150% use cap has been dialed back to its normal 135%, which combined with all those make-up double-headers going on and the impending roster expansion should give many teams a lot of flexibility.

ANTI-MIDAS TOUCH

With the sage wisdom of Bill James, Billy Beane, and Nuke LaLouche I revamped my team, seeking to trade pitching for hitting and fill holes at third and in the outfield. I was quite proud of my ability to hold on to Steve Matz, the most reliable Met starter on the season who’s jersey didn’t being with an upside-down letter “p,” and Fiers, who I’d snagged earlier in the year. I was eager to track the actual stats of my newly acquired core — Mahle (arguably Reds ace), Maeda (arguably Dodger #3) and Tropeano (Angel pitchers aren’t really numbered) plus Matz and Fiers. Their real-life performance in the week after I’d acquired them was 22 ER in 13.33 IP, with an ERA north of 14. Fiers actually pitched well — for 2 innings before he left with a line drive off of his shin. Maeda started a 14-0 loss and Matz started the 25-4 debacle that was (a) the worst loss in Met history, and (b) finished by converted pitcher Jose Reyes.

But the hitting? Newly-acquired outfielder Matt Kemp went 1-14 for an adjusted average of .000. In fairness, he was playing through a horrible Dodger team slump where they couldn’t score at all. Except for one 14-0 victory…during which Kemp was benched. My newly-acquired third baseman was Matt Reynolds, who I had falsely assumed to be sitting out due to some mysterious day-to-day injury and not general badness. He’s had all of 2 (that’s two, deuce, pair of aces) at-bats he’s had since I acquired him,

But there was a huge upside to the Reynolds acquisition! In his two at-bats Reynolds has ONE home run! The pitcher? Jose Reyes.

MLB teams should pay me not to acquire their players for my fantasy team.

KARMA?

The ongoing debate about whether Harper or Trout is better took an ASFBL twist when Andy and Greg traded the players for each other…and each was promptly injured. Harper took a pitch off the knee and Trout injured his hand sliding — feet first — into third. There are trades that make both teams better, there are trades that make both teams worse, and there are trades that leave both players injured.

THIS WEEK

The Cubs ran the table at 6-0, but only gained a half game since the Brewers were 6-1…the NL central race is still closer than 2 games….Braves (6-1) and Phillies (5-1) refused to concede the NL East to the Nationals, although Andy’s team went 4-2…Arizona inched forward in the NL West…Minsky’s Rays are convincing me I need to add a page that traces how hot a team has been over 20 or 30 games…but over the last 6 they were 5-1, best record in the AL…The Cleveland-Minnesota fight in the AL central went to the Indians this week…nobody in the AL west can break out, and Oakland and Seattle each gained on Houston as the Angels refused to go away…Nationals lead the ASFBL in runs scored by 65 when you look at the fantasy runs scored on the entire roster, but the Rockies have the highest total in their actual games…Yankees are second in that category and are all of 3 runs ahead of Boston…Houston has played the best defense, with fielders robbing a net of 119 hits….nobody has stolen more bases than the Brewers, who lead Cleveland by 10…

FEATS AND FAILURES

Cesar Hernandez of PHI struck out 4 times against BOS on 7/30/2018
Jorge Alfaro of PHI had 7 RBI against BOS on 7/30/2018
Ronald Guzman of SEA struck out 4 times against HOU on 7/30/2018
HOU and SEA played 15.5 innings on 7/30/2018
Chase Anderson of MIL had 10 strikeouts against LAD on 7/30/2018
Noah Syndergaard of BAL had 11 strikeouts against NYY on 7/31/2018
Kyle Schwarber of CHC had 7 RBI against PIT on 7/31/2018
Max Scherzer of WAS had 10 strikeouts against NYM on 7/31/2018
Sean Newcomb of ATL had 11 strikeouts against MIA on 7/31/2018
Carlos Carrasco of CLE had 13 strikeouts against MIN on 8/1/2018
Nathan Eovaldi of TBR had 14 strikeouts against LAA on 8/2/2018
Justin Upton of LAA struck out 4 times against TBR on 8/2/2018
ATL and NYM played 14.5 innings on 8/2/2018
Trevor Clifton of TEX had 12 strikeouts against BAL on 8/2/2018
Todd Frazier of CIN robbed 3 hits against WAS on 8/3/2018
Masahiro Tanaka of NYY had 10 strikeouts against BOS on 8/3/2018
Zack Godley of ARI had 10 strikeouts against SFG on 8/3/2018
Fernando Rodriguez Jr. of BOS had 12 strikeouts against NYY on 8/4/2018
Cesar Hernandez of PHI robbed 3 hits against MIA on 8/4/2018
Gio Gonzalez of LAA had 10 strikeouts against CLE on 8/4/2018
Jesus Aguilar of MIL struck out 4 times against COL on 8/4/2018
Christian Yelich of MIL had 5 hits against COL on 8/4/2018
COL and MIL played 16.5 innings on 8/4/2018
Zack Greinke of ARI had 10 strikeouts against SFG on 8/4/2018
Gerrit Cole of HOU robbed 3 hits against LAD on 8/4/2018